Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-03-27
CHAPTER XIV.
LINwooD TRANSFORMED.

ChAfl LIN Nh'"
LINwooD TRANSFORMED.
Shirley had sighed for change. WELL
she had had it.
EcYou wanted change, did you?" she said
70 herself. 'How do you like it, now you
have got it?"
She laughed at Shirley Carstone in her
bitterness, flying homeward in the tram
that day. For two weeks she had been as
happy as she thought 10 was given mortal
to be. 49,.
And now? she said to he other self II
her was a human being on earth who
thought himself more wretChed thru she
was, she would be willing to change places
with him.
Anold metaphysical question hoated into
her mind as she fled homeward still In that
dull train. Whether it is better to know
great happiness and at the same time axe
with it the fatal gift of susceptibility, TO
intense suffering, or to jog along moder-
ately comfortable. without ever experience
ing the highest height of joy or the deep
est depth of misery? In her stunned, bro
ken mental state, Shirley debated the pros
and cons OF that old question half a day.
Finally she SAID:
at is better to know neither great Joy
nor great suffering. There is more pain
than pleasure in the world, anyhow. The
unimpressible are the only happy, Thick
skinned people don't have half so much
bother"
In her blind misery little things the most
absurd came into Shirley's mind. Colonel
Carstone disliked crying women excessively
Once in her fathers lifetime she had seen
her mother weeping. Her father had said
smilingly:
'My dear, dry your tears. Crying wo-
men are an abnormal growth. They are
the result of excessive emotional develop
ment in the SEX since the day when man
was monkey. Think how many handker-
chiefs have been worn out, how many
bright eyes have been spoiled. Yes, think
how many classic noses have been Redeemed
through excessive emotional development.
My, dear, don't do it,"
Her IN dried her tears instantly.
She was always slightly in " of her
strong, merry husband. But the matter
seemed to strike Colonel Carstone some
how. lie thought of it further. Her
mother left the room presently, and then
he said rather seriously:
Shirley, don't you ever be one OF the
sniveling kind. Be rational, sensible hui
man being. Rely on your brains for hap
piness, instead of on your emotions. Since
the world began, there have always been
ByrOns to tell the race that mans love IS
of mans life q part, tits woman's whole
existence. Women have been told this so
often that they begin to think it is a credit
to them to break their hearts, so rs TO dis
play their superior emotional nature. It's
rubbish, Shirley. Women make two-thlrdS
of their unhappiness themselves, through
sentimental nonsense. 1t is not their fault
either, so much. The nonsense has been
educated into them, und must be educa-
ted out. They must learn self control. The
coming woman will repress her abnormal
emotional development, and put it back
into its right place. Then women will no
longer be more unhappy than men. Shir
ley, it would trouble me TO the last day Of
my life if l thought my daughter would
be one of those uncontrolled, emotional
women"
Shirley laughed. "Do | look like that,
papa?" she said.
mo; thank God" her father replied,
f%erventIy.
But what II solemn sermon you have
preached me-" she continued.
Every well, daughter, lay it away for a
rainy Sunday, and then read it," he an
swered.
Had the rainy Sunday come? Wa this
what her father meant? Now, after all,
had she, Shirley, inherited through ages
of mothers that same fatal emotional de-
velOpement her father had warned her
against? Was she going to let it wreck
her lie? How she scorned herself! Aud
yet
1t was q strange psychological experience
Shirley passed through at this time. 1t
was such a rude upsetting of all the ways
of thought to which she had been accus-
toned. The faiths and the ideals TO which
she had chung all her life, had been torn
out by the roots. Nights of sleeplessness
followed days of fierce mental conflict, till
at last she found herself in an odd state of
physical exhaustion and mental exalta-
ton.
In the depth of her grief the most laugh
able incidents she had known, the most
cOmical stories she had heard, came up be-
fore her with peverse persistency, and
Knocked her like fiends. Weird faces fol-
lowed her and watched her in the dark
ness, and finally in the daylight. They
were genuine images; she saw them plainly
with her waking eyes, in her right senses.
She could have described the dress they
wore, the color of their hair. The same
images haunted her day after day. This
one had the identical peculiarities of dress,
that one grinned at her with his ugly
mouth in the same way each time. And
these unpleasant images had no connection
in the remotest manner with anything in
Shirley's life so far as she could trace.